Wednesday, 28 January 2015

Lately I've become something of an expert in waiting. Waiting for
deliveries, waiting for answers to queries, waiting for the go-ahead
on work projects, waiting in queues at the bank. Yesterday I waited
nearly an hour for my optician appointment. “Thank you for being
patient” he said when he finally saw to me. Have you noticed that
they always say that - “thank you” - but never actually
apologise or explain? No matter, there was a copy of Tatler to
look through, several times, which I found so appalling that it was entertaining and
after perusing its photos of the aristocracy, I'm still smiling at the sight of Countess Spencer's voluminous hair.

So after the horrible eye test I've been coerced into spending a disproportionate amount of my income on
new glasses. Using one of those two-for-one offers which is never
really as good value as it sounds, I've a black frame and a turquoise frame on order. I may regret the turquoise... When I got home I
couldn't remember what they even looked like so I searched for them
online; I found the black ones and then noticed the website's sales
blurb that accompanied them:

'Resonant with smouldering embers and charcoal matt black,
making this the perfect frame for the unassuming type who is ready to
let loose'

I wonder who writes this stuff? I'm looking forward to letting loose, though!

~~~

We couldn't resist playing some
Aphrodite's Child on hearing about the death of Demis Roussos.

Aphrodite's Child: Magic Mirror

Dear Demis was undoubtedly groovy at
one time although, as a fond friend remarked, in our minds he will
always be linked to Abigail's Party.

By the way these are not my new glasses...

Mike Leigh's play is of course a masterpiece in uncomfortable but compelling
viewing. I suppose it taps into the curiosity we generally have
about what goes on behind the scenes in relationships and the
strange gratification that comes from discovering that things are
rarely as straightforward as they might seem.

That was resonant to me last
week when I met someone I haven't seen in 8 or 9 years and we were
trying to catch up in the time it takes to have a quick coffee. In the course of our general chit-chat she announced that her
life had changed, most dramatically, on one particular day in
April 2009. “But I won't bore you with all the sordid details...”
she said. “No, of course..,” I replied gently, but the voice
in my head was going, “Oh do! DO! Tell me everything, the more
sordid and detailed the better!” and as I sipped the rest of my coffee I waited
for her to drop me some little morsels that I could catch hungrily like a dog
jumping at its owner's feet for titbits. I'm still waiting...

~~~

Tomorrow I may have to wait in all day for a courier to collect some artwork, as I'm told he could come any time between 9am and 7pm. I will not be reading fucking Tatler.

Sunday, 25 January 2015

It used to say Please keep cars off the grass but I
think someone drove into it...

Here's that curvy crinkle-crankle wall - you remember I mentioned it before?

Ordinary objects in unexpected places seem to me as if they're
trying to say something.

I've just no idea what.

If we turn left at the end of the street for a change we can head up the
long drive towards a privately owned stately home.

Years ago I enquired
here to see if there was any part-time work I could do, thinking I
might be able to use some skills I'd picked up in my previous office
life. “Well, I do need someone to help me get more organised,”
the very nice lady of the house told me, “like reminding me when I need to go
to the dentist”.
I didn't think it was the job for me. It would have been good to
be surrounded by some of the animals here, though, most of which are
rare breeds.

Like the Norfolk Horn sheep. This was the breed which brought so
much wealth to this region in the Middle Ages because of the wool
trade. But by the 1950s, their numbers had dwindled to just 15. Curious as they are, I can't get too close to their front ends today,
they're too skittish. Apparently they're just as good as goats at
jumping over fences.

A dog with curly black hair and floppy ears is resolutely
ignoring his owner's calls. He's running the opposite way down the drive, intent on catching up with another dog at the bottom. “Archie!
Get back here! NOW!” Archie just keeps on going, until he's just
a few feet away from the object in his sights, upon which he loses his
nerve completely, turns right around and gallops back to his owner, ears flapping wildly.

The horses aren't bothered about Archie's flapping ears.

These Suffolk Punches are always chesnut in colour. You leave the middle 'T'
out of the spelling chestnut when referring to the strong russet brown of these
heavy horses, it's tradition. Like the Norfolk Horn sheep, they were
near to extinction at one time; in 1966 only 9 foals were born.

Thursday, 22 January 2015

Last night I had this dream in which I was playing, of all the most unlikely things, an accordion. I'd forgotten about it completely until I was flitting around the interwebs this morning and quite by chance I came across an article about, of all the most unlikely things, accordions. "Ooh, what a weird coincidence! I've just broken my dream!" I gasped, and went on to explain to Mr SDS how spookily odd it seemed that I should both dream about and read about, in the space of just a few hours, and of all the most unlikely things, accordions.

"No, it was the Johnnie Allen song" he replied.

Ah... my memory is so short sometimes. Last night, before I'd gone to bed, we'd been going through some music archives not heard in a long time, and it included Johnnie Allen's cover of Chuck Berry's 'Promised Land'. It's a great song, isn't it? And it has a very notable accordion break in it. Of course...

Monday, 19 January 2015

My Bubble 'n' Squeak didn't really bubble much yesterday but it did squeak. It was singing too... singing and sizzling away in the
pan, a joyous mash-up of leftover potato and of course greens. Sometimes that's cabbage but this time the potato sung its squeaky chorus with
sprouts and onion, seasoned with plenty of pepper and a dollop of Colman's mustard.

I love a bit of Bubble 'n' Squeak and apparently, so did George
IV, the Prince of Wales.

Oops, wrong pic.

This is the real George IV:

In his day, it wasn't made with potato at all, but was a mixture
of leftover beef or pork and veg although it's believed that
the meat-free version with mashed potatoes that we think of now became the norm around the time
of WWII. Bubble 'n' Squeak even gets a mention in Byron's Don
Juan and is gently ridiculed by 'Mary Midnight' (the alter-ego of
a satirical writer called Christopher Smart) in a publication called The Mid-Wife, or Old Woman's Magazine, from
1753:

'Take
of Beef, Mutton, or Lamb, or Veal, or any other Meat, two Pounds and
an half, or any other Quantity; let it lay in Salt, till the saline
Particles have lock’d up all the Juices of the Animal, and render’d
the Fibres too hard to be digested; then boil it over a Turf or Peat
Fire, in a Brass Kettle cover’d with a Copper Lid, till it is much
done. Then take Cabbage (that which is most windy, and capable of
producing the greatest Report) and boil it in a Bell-Metal Pot till
it is done enough, or if you think proper, till it is done too much.
Then slice the Beef, and souse that and the Cabbage both in a
Frying-Pan together, and let it bubble and squeak over a Charcoal
Fire, for half an Hour, three Minutes, and two Seconds. Then eat a
Quantum sufficit, or two Pounds and a half, and after it drink
sixteen Pints of fat Ale, smoak, sleep, snoar, belch, and forget your
Book.'

Very Blackadder...

Of course I don't really know all this stuff, I just had to research it,
unable to resist the yearning to satisfy some pointless curiosity about the history of such an endearingly named, typically English, dish. Next time... Spotted Dick and custard?

Wednesday, 14 January 2015

I looked out at the sky yesterday evening and tonight in the hope
of seeing a green light, up there somewhere near Orion's Belt. Of
course it was too cloudy and I couldn't even see any stars, let alone the
glowing luminescence of Comet Lovejoy which is apparently at its most
visible around about now. Have you seen it? I find it hard to get
my head around the idea that it's 44 million miles away and is
basically a big lump of ice that orbits the sun. It'll be another
8000 years before it's back...oh... these numbers are just too big.

I remember being given lessons about the night sky at primary school.
It's funny how so many little things I was taught at a very young age
stick forever, but very little of what I try to learn now (like the
definition of the word intractable for
some reason) maintains a permanent position in my brain.
Maybe it's just run out of space. If
that's the case perhaps 'recognition of Orion's Belt' should really
move out in favour of 'having an ever-expanding vocabulary that
includes the word intractable' - but it just won't budge.

intractable

ɪnˈtraktəb(ə)l/

adjective

hard to control or deal with.

"intractable economic problems"

(of a person) difficult or stubborn.

When I was about six we learnt about Halley's Comet too, because
there was another comet in the news around that time (I think). Teacher told
us that Halley's Comet was the most famous one and that we would be lucky enough to see
it in our lifetimes because it was due again in the far distant
future...1986! The thought of myself at 23 was as mind-blowing then
as hearing that Halley's Comet had been travelling around the sun for
thousands of years.

Later, perhaps when I actually was 23, I thought it a
wonderful coincidence that Bill Haley should call his band
'Comets'. Uh.

I don't recall ever seeing Halley's Comet that year but maybe I wasn't looking.

As far as Comet Lovejoy goes, though, what a sweet name. I'd like
to think it was named after the character from the eponymous, long-running but frankly rather crap BBC TV series (which just so happened to make its appearance in 1986 too and much of which was filmed around here), but in this case it's
Terry Lovejoy, an Australian amateur astronomist (I'm so glad I'm typing, not speaking). But I still can't help picturing a different kind of star altogether when I hear the name and there are worse things to think
about, I'm sure you'll understand.

Saturday, 3 January 2015

I've never knowingly seen a cuckoo, have you? I've heard them...
mostly in the long hot summers of my childhood... but not recently.
It's easy to mistake the repetitive call of a distant collared dove
for a cuckoo if you only catch the last two notes - in fact I heard
one today - but, whilst our collared doves are happy to stay here
however chilly our European winters might be, and coo-coooooo-coo
their way through Christmas and New Year, our cuckoos will now be in
warmer climes – Africa, usually, perhaps in Angola, or the Congo.

I suppose a more apt-sounding destination would be Cloud Cuckoo
Land, which in my head is somewhere between Timbuktu and Shangri
La... but which in fact (well, fiction) was a perfect city in the
clouds erected in an incredibly short time, the imaginative creation
of an ancient Greek playwright called Aristophanes. The name was
first used in 414BC in his comedy 'The Birds', which I understand
had nothing to do with Alfred Hitchcock...

Cuckooland also sounds
like a suitable place for the birds' winter holiday but it turns out
it's a cuckoo clock museum in Cheshire. Yes, you did read that right: a
cuckoo clock museum.

According to the lyrics of the traditional English folk song The
Cuckoo (or Coo Coo), it's a “pretty bird” who “warbles when s/he
flies”. Bob Dylan covered the song, as did numerous other artists
including Richard Thompson, Donovan and the Everly Brothers. The version I know best is by the Be Good Tanyas.

It's best not to anthropomorphise these birds though because, in
human terms, they would seem dysfunctional at best and murderous at
worst. The mothers had dumped their eggs in the nests of other
smaller species and abdicated from parental duties completely. The fathers had left the scene long beforehand, and their unknown young, once hatched, had been responsible for the
deaths of all the biological offspring of their unwitting new foster parents.
But if I can just compare one positive thing to human ability (or
lack of), it's their incredible migration. The thought of it boggles
my mind, as it does when I consider all creatures who travel vast
distances under their own power. I don't know if they warbled, or perhaps even wobbled, when they flew, but once the breeding season was over our cuckoos left their roots for a nine month stay thousands of miles away. The cuckoo weighs about the same as
an i-phone, and its wingspan is similar length to a human adult's arm from
shoulder to wrist. It can cover hundreds of miles a day at a speed
of 50mph and a cruising height of over a mile, across continents and
seas. (Don't even get me started on butterfly migration...)

The cuckoos will hopefully be back here in the Spring and we must
all listen out for the first one so that we can immediately write a
letter to The Times. The newspaper has been publishing 'first cuckoo
of Spring' letters for about a hundred years now, so it's a tradition
which really should be maintained. The only thing is to make sure
you don't first hear a cuckoo whilst cleaning the loo or having your
teeth drilled by a sadistic dentist. If possible, make sure you're
somewhere really nice, somewhere you'd like to spend more time, and
doing something that makes you happy, because superstition has it
that wherever you are and whatever condition you're in when you hear
the first cuckoo of Spring is how you'll remain for the next twelve
months.

Thursday, 1 January 2015

I love looking at everyone's blogs and being presented with such a wealth of talent. There is just so much great art, music, writing, comedy and photography, both from bloggers and from others whose work is showcased within, a lot of which I'd never know about if I hadn't met you all in Blogworld.

Recently, the lovely and talented fellow blogger Yve over at Nightshade Dolls has been working hard on a unique collaborative project, 'Cult Of Doll' and a preview of it in the form of a Mini Almanac is available to peruse online for the first time today.

With its stunning design, beautiful illustrations and a delicious air of gothic mystery it gives a little introductory taster of some fantastical tales dreamed up by the 'one of a kind' doll and figurative artists involved to accompany and complement their creations.

Here's the delightful poster for it

and here's the link . Just click on View to see the contents. I'm looking forward to further developments.

Images

Please note - whilst most images shown here have been taken from my own illustrations and photos or scans I have taken of my own possessions, if you would like me to remove any other images for any reason please contact me directly at the email address for this blog and I will immediately oblige.